5.  The applicants were born in 1922, 1936, 1938, 1918, 1943, 1918, 1948 and 1946 respectively. Two of the applicants, Ms Ginka Dimitrova Georgieva and Ms Todorka Dimitrova Dimitrova, live in Burgas, and the remaining applicants live in Sozopol.
6.  An ancestor of the applicants owned agricultural land in the Sozopol district, situated close to the seashore. In the 1980s it was included in the territory on which a new sea resort called Duni was constructed.
7.  The resort was initially managed by a State-owned enterprise, which was, in 1990, transformed into a State-owned company called Duni. The transformation entailed, under the relevant domestic provisions, the company becoming an owner of the assets it had until then used and managed. In 1991 it was registered as a joint-stock company.
8.  Until 1997 the State held all shares in Duni. 25% of the company’s shares were transferred to private parties in 1997, in the framework of a programme for “mass privatisation”. After that the company was named Duni AD. In the following years the State transferred more of its shares and by 2000 it was holding 25% of the company’s shares, a part of which were designated for compensation of former owners of land included in the company’s assets. In 2001 the State transferred a further 14% of its share in the company.
9.  The applicants have submitted a privatisation report dated 8 March 1999. According to the document, at that time about one third of the territory of the resort was comprised of land which had been restituted in kind to its former owners under the Agricultural Land Act (“the ALA”). The report found this state of affairs problematic and considered it most appropriate that the company should buy back that land.
10.  In the meantime, the ALA entered into force in 1991 (see paragraph 37 below). On that basis, on 15 December 1991 the applicants requested the restitution of 19,700 square metres of land taken from their ancestor.
11.  In a decision of 23 May 1992 the competent body, the Sozopol agricultural land commission, adopted a decision to restore the applicants’ property rights to land in the area of Duni totalling 11,517 square metres (“Plot A”). This land adjoined the buildings of the resort. The land commission did not provide reasoning as to why it considered that the criteria for restitution in kind set in the law in force at the time were met.
12.  In the same decision the commission refused to restore the applicants’ property rights in respect of the remaining 8,183 square metres of land (“Plot B”), as there were buildings and infrastructure of the resort constructed on it.
13.  On 6 May 1993 the applicants wrote to the Council of Ministers, with a copy to the Committee on Tourism, requesting (a) to be given possession of Plot A, and (b) to receive in compensation for Plot B shares in the State-owned company Duni, as they were entitled to under section 18 (2) of the Transformation and Privatisation of State and Municipally-Owned Enterprises Act (see paragraph 40 below). At the time the applicants did not receive a response.
14.  The applicants’ respective shares in the properties above were as follows: Ms Kera Genova Nedelcheva and Mr Raycho Genov Kostov were entitled to one quarter each, Mr Geno Moskov Dzhingov and Ms Minka Moskova Halvadzhieva – to one eighth each and the remaining applicants, Ms Frosina Dimitrova Gineva, Ms Magda Dimitrova Despotova, Ms Ginka Dimitrova Georgieva and Ms Todorka Dimitrova Dimitrova – to one sixteenth each.
15.  On 10 October 1994 the Sozopol agricultural land commission issued an act for the formal transfer to the applicants of possession of that part of the land. On 25 November 1994 the applicants obtained a notary deed. However, they were unable to assume actual possession because the land, although not occupied by buildings or infrastructure of the resort, remained within its fenced territory. The applicants did not bring proceedings to challenge this situation.
16.  In December 2000 Duni AD brought rei vindicatio actions against all persons who had had their property rights to land in the area of the resort restored after 1991.
17.  In the applicants’ case, Duni AD argued that the applicants had not become owners of Plot A by virtue of the land commission’s decision of 23 May 1992, because the commission had not been competent to order the restitution of land which was no longer agricultural. The company claimed that, on the contrary, it was the owner of the land at issue, which had been included in its assets.
18.  In addition, the company sought an interim injunction and the stay of any procedures concerning construction permits for that land. It is unclear whether the applicants had actually applied to receive such permits. The request for injunction was granted in a decision of the Burgas District Court of 15 December 2000.
19.  The rei vindicatio action was allowed in a judgment of the Burgas District Court of 18 October 2002. Upon an appeal by the applicants, on 17 July 2003 that judgment was quashed in part by the Burgas Regional Court, which upheld the lower court’s finding that Duni AD had been the disputed land’s owner, but disallowed the rei vindicatio claim itself because it found that the applicants were not holding the land. On 23 July 2004 that judgment was upheld by the Supreme Court of Cassation.
20.  The domestic courts found, most notably, that the land claimed by the applicants adjoined the buildings of the resort, and that the resort, including the buildings and the land, represented a complex of works within the meaning of section 10b of the ALA (see paragraph 38 below); it was not permissible physically to separate parts of this complex and transfer them to new owners. What was to be taken into account was the situation at the time of the ALA’s entry into force. These considerations were sufficient to conclude that the preconditions for restitution in kind had not been met and that the Sozopol land commission’s decision of 23 May 1992, on which the applicants based their property claims, was null and void in that part. The company Duni, later Duni AD, had validly acquired property to the land.
21.  Following the developments above, on 23 August 2004 the Sozopol Agriculture and Forestry Department (former land commission), relying on the Supreme Court of Cassation’s final judgment of 23 July 2004, adopted a new decision on the applicants’ restitution claims concerning Plot A, whereby it refused to restore the applicants’ property in kind.
22.  In a new decision of 20 January 2005 it held that the applicants were entitled to receive compensation for 6,653 Bulgarian levs (BGN) for the entirety of the land claimed in December 1991, that is for both Plot A and Plot B, through other comparable land or compensation bonds.
23.  On 6 April 2005 the applicants applied for judicial review of the decision of 20 January 2005, arguing, inter alia, that the Agriculture and Forestry Department had wrongly assessed the value of Plot A. On 30 November 2005 the Department’s decision was quashed by the Burgas District Court insofar as it concerned Plot A. In respect of Plot B the decision was upheld.
24.  At the time of the latest communication from the parties of September 2011, the Sozopol Agriculture and Forestry Department (as from 2008 called Agricultural Department) had not yet adopted a new decision setting the value of the compensation to be awarded to the applicants for Plot A, or determining whether the compensation would be through other comparable land or compensation bonds.
25.  As mentioned above (see paragraph 13), following the Sozopol agricultural land commission’s refusal to restore their rights to Plot B, on 6 May 1993 the applicants applied to receive compensation through shares in the State-owned company Duni under section 18 (2) of the Transformation and Privatisation of State and Municipally-Owned Enterprises Act (see paragraphs 12-13 above).
26.  In 1995 and 1998 the applicants informed the land commission that they had chosen to apply for compensation under the privatisation legislation.
27.  Their application in that regard was examined by a commission of the Ministry of Economics, appointed in December 2003, which took a decision on 5 October 2004. At that time the State retained 35,600 shares of BGN 1 each, equivalent to about 0.34% of Duni AD’s capital. The commission allotted the applicants 17,700 shares (the remaining available State-owned shares being designated for other former owners), in compensation for 5,401.6 square metres of Plot B, and stated that for the remaining 2,781.4 square metres the applicants were to receive comparable land or compensation bonds under the ALA.
28.  On 10 December 2004 the applicants applied for judicial review of that decision. They challenged the assessment of the value of the shares due in compensation for their land and considered that the partial satisfaction of their claim for compensation through shares was not justified. In that latter regard they stated that they did not wish to have their compensation claim referred to another body, where the procedure could take a lengthy period of time.
29.  On 28 June 2007 the Burgas Regional Court quashed the above decision and held that the applicants were entitled to receive 56,997 shares of BGN 1 each in compensation for the entirety of Plot B. It found, in the first place, that the decision did not contain any justification for awarding shares only for part of Plot B. As to the amount of compensation, the Regional Court commissioned an expert report, which the Ministry of Economics did not challenge, and which, by comparing the value of Duni AD’s assets, calculated on the basis of a recent privatisation proposal, with the value of Plot B, concluded that the applicants were entitled to the amount of shares indicated above, which constituted 0.54926% of Duni AD’s shares at the time.
30.  That judgment was upheld on 4 January 2008 in a final judgment of the Supreme Administrative Court.
31.  On 29 January 2009 the applicants deposited the above judgments with the Ministry of Economics and demanded their implementation. On 25 March 2009, 29 October 2010 and 22 March 2011 the Ministry proposed to transfer to them the State’s remaining 17,700 shares in Duni AD. It referred to the fact that the State did not hold any further shares, although it did not appear to dispute its duty to transfer the remaining shares. The applicants refused the partial settlement proposed. It appears that no other settlement has been offered to them to date.
32.  Upon a request by the applicants, on 24 June 2009 a judge at the Burgas Regional Court ordered the Minister of Economics to pay a fine of BGN 2,000 for having failed to comply with the judgment of 28 June 2007, as upheld by the Supreme Administrative Court on 4 January 2008. On 31 March 2010 the order was upheld by a three-member panel of the Burgas Regional Court, which noted, in particular, that the unavailability of a sufficient amount of State-owned shares did not absolve the Minister from his obligation to comply with the judgments.
33.  Parallel to the above developments, on 25 March 2000 the Sozopol land commission awarded the applicants compensation bonds for BGN 3,601 for the entirety of Plot B.
34.  In May 2004 the applicants requested from the Sozopol Agriculture and Forestry Department (former land commission) official documents concerning Plot B, which they needed to submit to the Ministry of Economics in connection with the procedure described above for compensation through shares. The applicants reminded the Department that they were entitled to choose and had chosen to seek compensation for Plot B through shares, and did not wish to receive compensation bonds under the ALA.
35.  Subsequently, the Agriculture and Forestry Department annulled its decision of 25 March 2000 and the compensation bonds issued on its basis. Nevertheless, as already mentioned, on 20 January 2005 the Department awarded once again to the applicants compensation for Plot B under the ALA. That decision, upheld by the Burgas District Court in the respective part, is still in force (see paragraphs 22-23 above).
36.  After the present application’s communication, on 4 November 2010 the Ministry of Economics requested from the Sozopol Agricultural Department (formerly the Agriculture and Forestry Department) information about any compensation procedures concerning Plot B. In a letter of 12 November 2010 the Department informed the Ministry of its decisions concerning the plot.